While Ohio agriculture officials look for the cause of another mass die-off of commercial
honeybees, beekeepers say they know what’s killed them — a popular insecticide.

Hundreds of thousands of dead honeybees were discovered outside hundreds of hives last month in
Delaware, Fairfield, Hardin, Miami, Pickaway and Ross counties.

“We are trying to figure this out because we don’t want it to happen again,” state apiarist Barb
Bloetscher said.

Central Ohio beekeeper Jim North said he believes a class of insecticide called neonicotinoids
is responsible for the dead bees outside of more than 300 of his 350 hives in Pickaway, Fairfield
and Ross counties.The insecticide is used to control crop pests.

“I haven’t found a hive that I could definitely point to and say that the pesticide has wiped it
out,” North said. “It has seriously weakened a lot of them to the point where we won’t be able to
get a spring honey flow.”Jack Boyme, a spokesman for Bayer CropScience, one of the largest
manufacturers of neonicotinoids, said the company has been in touch with Ohio officials, and Bayer
thinks something other than pesticides might have caused the bee deaths.

“It’s been kind of an unusual weather pattern with a mild winter and an early spring,” Boyme
said. “Some of the reports that we’re hearing is that the bees are coming out earlier and that
there is not enough available food for them.”

These deaths come in the midst of a global investigation of another mysterious bee malady called
colony collapse disorder, in which bees suddenly abandon their hives and die.

Though neonicotinoid pesticides are being investigated as a cause for colony collapse,
Bloetscher and other experts say these deaths are different.

“The classic example is the pile of dead bees outside the colony,” said Reed Johnson, bee
researcher with the Ohio State University Extension. “Having a lot of them happen simultaneously,
it is almost certainly a pesticide.”Ohio farmers rely on bees to pollinate more than 70 crops,
including apples, strawberries and pumpkins. Nationwide, bees pollinate $14.6 billion in fruits and
vegetables every year.State records list 33,932 hives at 6,553 registered apiaries
statewide.Neonicotinoids are used to coat seed corn and have been linked to bee deaths in other
states and countries. Their use in crops was suspended at least temporarily in France, Germany,
Italy and Slovenia, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A Purdue University study, published in the journal
PloS One in January, found “extremely high levels” of the insecticide in talc, a
lubricating powder used to spread corn seeds in fields, after bees died in Indiana in 2010.

The study found the greatest potential for exposure to bees occurred when waste talc is released
in planting machinery exhaust.

Johnson and other beekeepers say their honeybees did not starve to death.

“A mild winter can be a problem, but it wasn’t this year,” Johnson said.

Bloetscher and Matt Beal, chief of plant health for the Ohio Department of Agriculture, said
they hope lab tests will reveal a cause in coming weeks. The deaths were reported from April 12
through April 16 while corn was being planted.

Dana Stahlman, president of the Ohio State Beekeepers Association, said the group is urging its
members to report suspected pesticide kills on its website, www.ohiostatebeekeepers.org, and to the
state.

Like Johnson, he said Ohio’s early spring was shaping as a good one for bees.